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About JustANoob

"Also, in my case, all that stuff it's not a core mechanic for the game. It's just an addition which, I think, could make the game more interesting and attract more people." -
Ignoring the potential legal issues I agree that it would both make the game more interesting and attract more people. You could leach quite a few people off entropia pretty easily and start off with a bigger player base then you would otherwise be able to get with almost no effort. I know I would and have tried out ANY game with any sort of RCE mechanic in it even if I thought it sounded terrible and the screenshots look horrible.
"Anyway, I'm mostly trying to understand here how such mechanic could affect the in-game experience, that's it." -
I think the biggest and easiest to predict impact compared to having the same game without real money trading will be that the most in demand items will be nearly impossible to buy without real money. Depending heavily on numerous other factors this could be anywhere from a very good to very bad thing. Many people will hate this and have no interest in the game but they are not your target market so I wouldn't worry about them.
Some games have items that are basically untradable because the currency has no real use and is so deflated that people ask for billions or trillion of it when it could take an hour to get 1,000. It would be much better to just use real money in that case (at least for the seller). Even if the currency actually has a use I think it would be good for people to not be hoarding large amounts of it to trade for an item (use real money instead).
I could definitely see an economy in a game like this where some rare items get bought for outrageous amounts of ingame currency or other lesser items by players quitting the game who then sell that rare thing off for real money in order to "cashout" of the game. Kind of the exact opposite of how many entropia players end up trading down to get lessor items that are easier to sell for cash.
There would likely be a lot of traders in the game that profit by knowing what they can buy for how much ingame currency and how much real money they can then turn around and sell that item for and then what they can buy to get back more ingame currency or real money then they started with. There probably will be a lot more scammers ingame too if there is potential to make real money. There also would likely be a lot of autoclickers, bots, gold farmers if enough money is able to be made from them.

I see that it seems to be rated well on the site but some people complain some things are not explained well Others complain it goes to slow (sounds good to me).
Has anyone here tried this course as a complete beginner at c++? Were you able to follow it? Can you actually make games now assuming you have the art assets needed?
Is there anything you would recommend I learn before starting the course?

Ya I have read that anything that you can do programming you can do in blueprints. Is it as effective\efficient as programming though? Like will it waste more cpu or memory or waste more bandwidth (if multiplayer) then an expert c++ person coding instead?

Thanks for the video's link I'll check those out. One question you may or may not be able to answer. I see that the video says "pre v4.7". Do you know if all these videos still work with the latest version?
I have a sam's teach yourself book on UE4 and I have noticed at times that things they say to do are no longer possible the way they say to do them in the newest version of the engine.

I have pretty much no programming experience other then some community college over 10 years ago. I remember none of the syntax but have a basic understanding of conditional statements and loops. I'm very good with learning overall concepts and very bad with exact syntax and memorizing small details unfortunately or else I would just try c++ instead.
What is the best way to go about trying to learn the UE4 blueprint system for someone like me? Any sites or books you would recommend (preferably free)?
What types of games are well suited to using the blueprint system and no c++?
I would guess its a very bad idea to do multiplayer in blueprints but most single player games should be fine?
Is there any type of test or general rule to figure out whether or not something will work well with just blueprints?
Is it almost as difficult to learn blueprints as c++? Should I just try c++ instead even though it will be much longer before I can actually do anything useful with it? Any recommendations on free c++ learning material?
Would c++ be easier to learn after learning blueprints?
Any additional advice is welcome. Thanks

After many years of inactivity I have just recently over the past few days started looking around this forum again. Its quite a coincidence that this topic was posted just yesterday as it was a major part of the project that I wanted to get started when I signed up at this forum. I'm currently trying to figure out how it could maybe work without the real money economy.
- rant about legal issues you can ignore if you want - (After reading up on the legal issues (I live in the US) I decided I didn't want to risk getting all my assets seized as the kingpin of an illegal criminal enterprise under the RICO act and to go to jail for violation of the bank secrecy act of 1970 and the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act of 2006 (these are the repercussions of the federal government ruling that virtual currencies like bitcoins are real money). There is a book I bought on amazon that sort of covers this topic and mentions second life and entropia quite a bit (before the ruling on virtual currency by the feds) called virtual law navigating the legal landscape of virtual worlds by benjamin tyson duranske if your interested in it.) - end rant -
I am very familiar with entropia universe as I played it quite a bit around 2006 - 2010 right before they went to cryengine. It pretty much ruined my ability to enjoy online games anymore as it just feels pointless and boring without real money being involved. I was one of the few people that never got lucky with a big loot, never put in a large amount of money, never scammed anyone and still managed to make thousands of dollars playing it (it would have been $10,000's if I had started with a big deposit). Then cryengine was announced, it became a money pit, and I quit.
In terms of game design I think a game like this will not appeal to most people however there are enough people that are interested in it that you could have a successful game.
I don't quite get how you say it wouldn't be pay to win though. I mean it is not the typical pay to win where you pay the developer, instead you pay another player or players to "win" or at least get some advantage (unless you only plan on having cosmetic items tradable). I do think this is a better system though. I would rather pay another player who got lucky to get something rare or spent his time to grinding some boring gameplay to get loot I need in a trade then to just pay the game developer but that's just me.
As for in-game economy issues just take a look at entropia. I haven't really looked at it much in years but I remember the massive inflation ($20k+ for a gun, $35k to heal yourself) and the players that cheated early on that have insurmountable skill levels that you can never compete with. At the same time some loot items and mined materials just kept getting cheaper and cheaper until it was tt food. It would be very difficult if not impossible to have a stable economy in such a game but then again I don't think its a requirement either.
"Should such game try to make any protection from out-of-game trading between players?" I would think you legally would have to due to international anti money laundering laws on top of the fact that if your income is from taxing these trades you don't want people not paying you.
If you ever do end up starting a project I would love to be kept up to date on it. If you live outside the US I don't think you will have many legal issues in most countries. Even in the US you would probably go by completely unnoticed but I wouldn't want to risk it.

Forgot a very important question. What would be a fair assumption for the cost per player per hour to host a MMO? What factors effect this number? Is this even a valid concern or is most of this cost going to depend on the cost of servers needed to support the max number of concurrent users?

I have almost 0 programming experience and exactly 0 art and networking experience and don't plan on learning anything other then the overall general basics I need to know to design a game within a budget I can spend. I know I know everyone has a idea and you will never beable to do this blah blah blah. I don't care. I believe strong enough in my ideas on game mechanics and revenue generation to spend the next year or two trying. So the main questions for right now before I even begin making a game design document are...
What do I need to learn before it even makes sense to make a game design document and where can I learn it? Keep in mind the budget for the game is not going to be known until after the document is done as I plan on using that to put the people and resources together to try to make this happen. I'm hoping based on nothing really that 250k is a bare minimium to make something close to what I want in terms of gameplay. If I just wanted to make a nintendo nes graphics level game with more advanced gameplay and mechanics and beable to handle 500 concurrent users in a persistant world do you think that would be enough money? Assuming I'm paying a normal wage for all or most work (could probably get some cheap or free art at this level of graphics)? If not how much would be needed and how much of that is paid labor for programming, art, networking vs licensing and hardware etc costs? How much do costs go up as the graphics improve? Think the exact same game but NES level to GTA 2 level graphics? What would the extra cost be in $ or multiples of the original art budget?
What is the cost breakdown of making a MMO? The massive multiplayer aspect is the most important part of this idea (other then my original ideas i'm not going to share). How much of the cost does this aspect account for in terms of both extra programming and servers and bandwidth needed? If I have a game that can handle 1000 concurrent users is that going to be significantly more costly then the same game that could handle only 100 users? Does the size of the ingame world drastically effect the amount of servers or size of servers needed? Does the maximum number of players that can be in a certain area at the same time or in the same "instance" of the game affect cost alot? Would having gameplay that "instances" off small teams of players in certain areas be more cost effective?
Are there any patents that I'm going to have to be careful of violating or that basically every MMO has to pay a fee for using? If so what is going to be the cost of licensing the basic patents to make a MMO?
I realize some of these questions are mostly unanswerable without knowing exactly what the game design is but I'm just looking for very rough estimates atm to determine what to plan for in the game design and business plan. Any examples of other sub $10 million MMO's and their production costs and features would be useful. Any questions you can answer or new questions you think I should ask myself or helpful links you can provide would be appreciated. I have no illusions of making a AAA graphic game and realize that getting any game done with little to no money out of pocket and 0 experience in the industry is completely unheard of so no need to make a negative post telling me that. Thanks